King and lion heart
by wobuzhidao
Summary: Slowly, but surely the noise faded away, once again leaving the clearing in complete silence. Hunith breathed a deep sigh of relief. they were safe... but Balinor...he... it did not bare thinking about. he was a grown man, a lord of Dragons no less, he could fend for himself. She slowly pulled back the top fold of her cloak, meaning to steal a glance at the tiny bod pressed to he
1. prologue

A thin layer of the pure white snow, which was still falling steadily blanketed the ground, making the clearing seen at once serene and foreboding. The skeletons of once flowery trees stood black against the empty landscape, every knot and twist in their branches so pronounced that they began to look like figures of gods and monsters all locked together in a large seething a single creature moved, all of them having burrowed deep into the ground days ago before the worst of the chill could set in and the ground frozen to hard to move.

A young women pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, doing the best she could to keep the bundel she held tightly to her chest warm, it's royal blue color seeming so alien in the black and white surroundings.

She might have once been a rare beauty, but the frigid wind had leeched the color out of her once rosy cheeks, leaving it weather beaten and deathly white. Her long brown hair had long since fallen out of the long plait it had been in the morning before, falling out piece by piece as she ran through the silent forest. Strands of it stuck to her face at odd angles giving her a look of some wild fury, and yet she still managed to look regal almost dignified.

There was a cracking noise, from somewhere deeper into the woods, breaking into the silence like the sound of a drum. The woman froze, her large electric blue eyes, flashing a dull gold, as a group of ten men emerged from the trees and made there way towards her. Their red cloaks shone the color of freshly spilt blood, a violent crimson, in the white light of the snow. It was a wonder she hadn't heard them earlier, for the sound of their heavy chain-mail shifting as they walked should have been sufficient warning. One of the men walked a little ahead of the others, a strained expression on his handsome face. He gestured for the company of knights (for they were Knights) to come to him. She saw the crests stitched carefully onto the breast of their cloaks and took a sharp intake of breath.

Camelot.

The man who appeared to be in charge looked up quickly, steely blue eyes scanning the space before him as if he knew that someone was there, his hand moved down to rest on the hilt of his sword.

He moved forward, taking slow,even steps until he stood only a few paces away from where she stood, not daring to even blink lest the knight should sense it. But of course that was ridiculous, the enchantment would hold, he could not know they were there.

The young women raised her eyes to the mans face. His hair was cut short, a deep chestnut brown, which contrasted sharply with his cold blue grey eyes. There was no emotion in them, no love,remorse, or even anger, just calculation. He slowly raised his hand and made to reach out, his long, thin fingers a hairs breadth away from her, and then "Sire! we must make haste! the dragon scum has run to the west, word has been sent from sir Hart that they are in pursuit."

The man, King Uther Pendragon of camelot turned abruptly what ever he had seen or thought he had seen completely forgotten.

"James ride back to the castle and have things made ready for my return! Liam, William, we shall join sir hart in the hunt." He crossed back to the company in a few long strides and mounted his horse, before galloping back into the warren of branches and snow.

Slowly, but surely the noise faded away, once again leaving the clearing in complete silence.

Hunith breathed a deep sigh of relief. they were safe... but Balinor...he... it did not bare thinking about. he was a grown man, a lord of Dragons no less, he could fend for himself. She slowly pulled back the top fold of her cloak, meaning to steal a glance at the tiny bod pressed to her breast, asleep no doubt. She was meet with the stare of blue the color of a spring day staring back at her. Unblinking and level. She put the flap back in place slowly, carefull not to dislodge her little boy.

And hen she ran, and didn't stop until she reached the tiny town on the boarder of Cenred's kingdom, where they stayed in peace for almost seventeen years until everything went to hell.


	2. Stay Fight Run

The sky was startlingly blue, and from his vantage point at the top of the mountain, merlin could have sworn that this was the most beautiful scene in the whole of Albion, if not the world itself. In the valley below lay a field covered in a soft purple carpet of the lavender, a product which Ealdor was known for growing all throughout the kingdom,at least among traders, as the court seemed to disregard the insignificant border purple blossoms rippled in the wind, rippling like waves on the sea. There was only one word to describe the scene; magical.

An early spring sun was high in the sky lending the day a touch of brightness despite the slight chill in the air, something all together uncharacteristic for this time of year. His mother had practically forced him into his leather jacket as he ran out the door, and while he had protested at first, merlin was now glad Hunith had insisted as he pulled it closer to him in an attempt to stave off the slight chill. He could see a flock of small, white birds flying lazily through the air overhead, and for a moment he too wished he could fly away from his life here. migrate to a place where he would be excepted, where his magic would not be regarded as a curse.

A group of sheep were grazing at the base of the snow capped mountain, keeping well away from the line of dark trees which signaled the end of Cenred's kingdom and the begging of the kingdom of camelot. He could see the faint outline of the shepard sprawled in the grass looking up at the sky. Merlin wished that he had the time to do just that, just lay down and take in the sights and sounds of nature around him, but he had a job to do, a task which could come second to none.

The king, did not care about the border villages, in fact he openly ignored them. It was a fact which was known to all that should anyone set their eyes on taking the village of Ealdor for their own, they would be met with no resistance. The villagers,traders,knights, lords, knew that they were vulnerable and alone, and so did the raiders. The young men in merlin's village had all grown to be strong and large, they could not be sparred from field work, but merlin had not filled out as the years passed by, instead he had stayed as willowy,tall, and pale as (if not paler than) any of the women or girls. While he was just as brash and daring as any boy his age he was by far cleverer than all of his peers. For these reasons he had been shunned by all but a few, however none was his equal when it came to speed and none in the village had a sharper eye, so he was assigned with the mind-numbingly boring task of watching out for any sign of attack.

His face was pale and thin, almost elven in appearance, he possessed high aristocratic cheek bones and his sparkling blue eyes could have cut through diamond with their intensity. many thought him beautiful, though he himself didn't think so. Merlin thought his ears were too big, his body to gangly and thin to be attractive.

He sat on his usual perch, letting his long legs stretch out, his back laying against the cool rough edge of the rock. Merlin was usually up there on the mountain from dawn till sunset. Even the raiders with their undisciplined packs were not stupid enough to attack at night, for this was when all things evil and magical roamed the land, and magic was feared above all.

Merlin hated it, the fear, the idiocy of it all, of everyone around him. How could they be so thoughtless? Magic had the power to destroy, yes, but it also could heal, save lives, even create a better world.  
it was like a sword, in the wrong hands it could cause pain and suffering, but in good ones it could create kingdoms and protect.

He let out a deep sigh, letting his body lean further into the rock. There was a small patch of the white flowers which grew only in the highest places on the mountains by his side. Merlin watched as their little petals were blown into the air, each gust of frozen win making them sway and shake, like dancers on a dew green stage. He raised his hand, and with a golden flash of his eyes the petals began to slow, their swarm condensing and shaping into a clear figure. They formed a white knight on a shining white steed, sword raised in a silent charge across the sky. The man was faceless, and yet it seemed to merlin that he had seen him somewhere before. Merlin knew every line and dip of that face by heart. "Once upon a dream" he said wistfully, his voice nothing more than a whisper.

Merlin slowly lowered his hand and the image scattered, now nothing more than petals on the breeze.

The one thing that he cherished about his time on the mountain was that he was able to think, uninterupted by nothing but the sounds of nature. His dreams had grown stranger of late and even the sleeping draughts his mother had given him were having no effect. There was that man, a boy really, who looked to be about twenty or so maybe only a few years merlins senior, always clad in shining white armor. He had shining golden hair, whose fringe framed a strong jawed handsome face with an aristocratic roman nose. His stormy blue eyes flashed with some un-namable emotion. love, hate, anger, pain, all twisted together into something so painfully beautiful. the white knight never spoke, but in his dreams they would walk together over moors and dales, through field and over mountains, all he while in complete silence.

* * *

The sun was making its way own towards earth, slowly wiping away the brilliant reds, oranges, and pinks and replacing them with a star speckled inky black.

Merlin, rose slowly, taking a sharp intake of breath as his muscles cramped from disuse. Once standing he stretched his arms before pulling his jacket closer to him and turning to make his way back down the mountain, and that was when he saw it.

A black column making its way slowly through the lavender field below. Raiders. Merlin froze, his mind kicking into overdrive as he ran through every option available to him.

Run.

Stay.

Fight.

_no one will be coming to replace me at this will notice your absence._

_but by then it will be to late._

_I am out here by my self, I am alone and no one is coming to help me._

_run back to the village?_

_warn someone._

_How?by the time you get there they will be over run._

_fight._

_How can i fight?_

_there is no way a tiny little farm boy can take on a legion of armed warriors._

_You can do it_, a voice said merlins thoughts slowed. the voice was strong and oaky, it was the kind of voice that made you want to trust it, to follow it off the edge of the abyss.

How?

_Magic._

_merlin clenched his fists, concentrating more than he had in his entire life._

_he closed his eyed visualizing. he could see them all in perfect detail now, their missing teeth and untrimmed beards. They wore black leather and some wore fur lined boots, probably stripped from the feet of dead on the battle field._

_They were silent as death, but there was aprehension._

_fear._

_they were afraid of this valley, of the dark nights of albion._

He picture them all freezing in place, turning into stone, and with a surge of power his eyes flew open flashing a deep gold. There was a flash of blue light which swept over the whole of the valley. And suddenly merlin was in front of the raiders, standing in the middle of the valley, his body cloaked with blue light. He stared at the raiders. fifty living, breathing men, turned to statues.

Merlin turned, to run, to get away from it all, the reality that in saving his village he had murdered these men, and came face to face with with Will. He was breathing hard, but remained eerily silent.

Will was tall and strongly built, his father had been a knight once upon a time, cut down in service. Cenred had left his fathers young wife and child to fen for themselves. It had made will hard.

A hard man in a hard country living a hard life.

"I saw you merlin." he said finally. His voice was flat, as completely devoid of emotion as his handsome face.

"i don't know what-"

"I saw you."

That was it.

Everything was over. Will would report him and they would throw him out or kill him or worse, send him off to Cenred to be trained by one of those priestesses, cursed to be a pawn used to kill and frighten.

"so what now?" merlin asked calmly, as if he was talking about the weather instead of his fate.

There was hope still. Will had always stood up for him, defending him when the other boys pushed him around or mocked him for his feminine form. Even now the hatred which merlin had seen in the eyes of his fellow villagers whenever a sorcerer was discovered or captured was not present. silence.

" Run merlin, run. Go home, grab your bag and any possessions you hold dear, say goodbye to your mother and flee."

" why? you could turn me in."

Will sighed, the expression in his eyes wistfull, a faint smile on his face.

" your not a bad person merlin. You are better than all of us in fact, and i wish you could stay... but its not safe for you here anymore." and with that he pulled merlin into an embrace, kissing him lightly on the cheek before releasing him. run home merlin, i will pray to the gods that we shall meet again.

And Merlin ran.

* * *

A/N: ok here is chapter one. I hope you like it. please review and feel free to ask me any questions. I am not abandoning losing my own game for this, but i plan to update them both as frequently as i can. thanks, love you all -wobuzhidao

ps, the formatting has been fixed. i hope it reads smoother now


	3. Upon the Misty Moors

The temperature seemed to drop more and more as he neared the great fortress of Camelot, and from the top of the great hill he could see the land that made up his new home, if all went well. Merlin's hand drifted unconsciously to his pocket, sliding in quickly to make sure that the thin roll of parchment that his mother had thrust into his hands as he left the house the night before was still there. That it was real and that this wasn't all some sad dream. It had been covered with tiny wet patches where her tears had fallen as she hurriedly scribbled a note to the only person she trusted in all of Camelot.

Merlin closed his eyes, as he thought back to that moment, to those quite words she whispered into his ear before she kissed him goodbye for the last time. " Tell no one where you come from or where you are traveling. You must not mention my name to anyone but Gaius, for he will help you. Say nothing of your magic, or your father, never your father, do you understand?" he nodded meekly. "Camelot is no friend to you" and then silently as she pulled away.

" It was never a friend to any of us."

His mother had rarely spoken of Camelot, and when she did it was briefly and very cold, as if even the name was unbearable. But standing here now, Merlin could not understand her hatred. How could something so beautiful, hold so many bad memories for her?

There were rolling hills full of forest which obscured the mountains whose tips could be seen in the distance an fields blanketed in thick carpets of emerald grass seemed to span for miles until they reached the small collection of homes and tents built around the white shell which composed the walls of Camelot.

The shining white castle stood out amongst the green of the landscape, only serving to make it look more pristine and unearthly, its white towers and spires piercing the cloudless blue sky.

It looked like the description of some fairy princes' castle in a storybook, where there were balls and feasts held every night, where handsome knights and virtuous maidens fell in love in love and lived happily ever after.

The castle in Cenred's kingdom, and in fact all of the castles which Merlin had heard of in stories or seen in the pictures of is mothers books, had been a deep charcoal gray, almost black in some places, although unlike Camelot, the castle of Cenred was not built only by black magic, but also by evil men whose hearts were darker than any form of sorcery in the world.

The story was well known, not almost to the point where it was common knowledge, but known all the less. There were few who knew the true account of what had actually taken place, and after all the embellished version was so much more fanciful.

A sorcerer king and his host of dark magicians who had long tormented the land of Albion with their vile spells had built it long ago. They had just appeared on misty day, upon a lonely more, thousands and thousands of men clad in black, with their leader cloaked in a mantle as black and shining as the feathers of a crow.

In those days all of Albion had been magical and one could feel the magic that had existed even in the very earth. The druids had thrived and so had all of those who sought to use magic for good and pure things, but evil had also, as it was wont to do.

One day, their leader, a man named Sirin, had simply vanished and as if by some spell so had the rest of his followers, leaving the dark castle empty and completely devoid of life.

Sirin had been a cruel man, cold and calculating. He had been known as the ice king by the common people, for his skin was ghostly pale, his hair a silvery white and his blue eyes had been as cold as the coldest winter day.

Some had though he was a fallen angel, others a fairy spirit who felt slighted by his brother, who had cheated him out of his throne and had come to exact his revenge by conquering all of man kind. All though, some thought he was not a real man at all but a story made up to keep people away from the lands which he was reputed to inhabit, with an actor who would appear to play the part should someone come to investigate.

All who held these opinions were typically high ranking men in the their respective kingdoms, men who were thought to be very worldly and correct, not just by themselves but by their kings and knights. Men of 'science' and 'knowledge' who thought they knew everything because they had once read it somewhere in a book, or someone else had read it and told them.

They were of course, very wrong, as these kinds of men typically are.

Sirin had been very real and very dangerous.

He had conquered almost all of albion, until there were only a few cities which had not yet fallen under the ice king's rule.

It had seemed as if his rule was inevitable and then he just disappeared, leaving the world empty and confused.

At first there had been much speculation as to where the great host had gone and if they would return, but soon they faded out of the minds of the people of Albion, turning into nothing more than legend.

Tales with which to scare little children into obedience.

" You had better behave or the ice king will come to you in your sleep and drag you off to fairy land to be his slave!" you could hear mothers say to naughty little children on the street. The little ones would gasp in horror, eyes widening in fright, and the adults would laugh at the foolishness of it all.

Merlin shook himself out of his revelry and began the slow descent down the mountain. He was still far enough away form the castle that there were no sounds but the whipping of the wind and the chatter of birds. No one else was on the thin road, and for the first time in his life merlin felt in want of company.

It was one thing, he thought, to sit up on the mountainside alone and stare up at the blue sky, but the road was a great deal different. He had not time and not enough provisions to stop and rest, and it was far too cold and windy to do so anyway. He felt as if he could kill for just a bit of the trivial conversation, which had bored him so much at home.

" I wonder what he was like…" he mused. " assuming he even existed, a sorcerer that powerful… could have rebuilt the foundations of the earth, moved mountains, changed the color of the sky, even! Oh what I would give to meet such a man… if he was… a man. Although I guess you would have to ask what kind of a man goes about calling himself the 'Ice king'." Merlin laughed. After all, it was outlandish and a bit melodramatic, Ice king…

" What kind of a man indeed." A voice said quietly. It was a cold voice, as harsh as the wind and yet as melodious as the sweetest music in all existence.

Merlin froze and turned slowly to see the man standing behind him. He was covered in a cloak of gray, fastened with a silvery broach encrusted with diamonds. The man's face was thin and pale, to the point where it almost looked feminine, but merlin could see that the figure was indeed a man.

He was certainly not the type of dirty faced vagabond that merlin had feared he would meet on the road. Those were hard men with greasy hair and grimy faces, the nails on their broadsword callused fingers covered in dried mud and faded blood stains. In fact he looked somewhat like he was lost, or had just appeared there at the top of the hill, for his cloak was spotless, while the hem of merlin's trousers were dirty and damp. Of course that was impossible.

No sane man would do magic anywhere near Camelot, let alone within its very boarders.

The stranger was radiant, but it was a sort of icy beauty, cold and untouchable and decidedly unsettling. Frozen and ageless was the best way to describe it, like a figure carved from pale marble.

The man smiled, his blue eyes flashing in a way, which made feel very Merlin uneasy.

" My name is Andel. I have made my way here from the north to Camelot and am very much in want of company. I would be honored if you would walk with me. I feel as if this frigid weather and the silence would drive me mad, and there is still a day and a half to go, I think, before we reach the palace gates and I hope you will pardon my saying, but I assume it would not be wrong to say that you might be glad of the company."

As Andel spoke it was as if the rest of the world had stopped to listen. The wind could no longer be heard and the birds had stopped chirping and singing their little songs to each other, even the leaves in the trees were silent and unmoving.

As soon as the man's lips closed around the last syllable, the spell was over and sound returned again to the world… or had it ever left? Merlin shook it off as nothing, just a trick of the mind.

Merlin was not sure how to proceed, his mother's words still present in the forefront of his mind.

_Tell no one. Tell no one. Tell… no.. one.. _

However the litany was soon drowned out by a new thought.

_Why not, there is no need to fear this man, and besides you would welcome the company. There is nothing to fear merlin, accept. _

The beautiful traveler stood still, waiting for a response patiently. His face was calm and composed, his eyes however flashed and seemed to move like roaring waves on a stormy sea.

He felt as if he could trust Andel, there was something about the man that commanded it. His body urged him forward and merlin smiled, extending a hand to the stranger.

" I would welcome it greatly, Andel. My name is merlin."

" Well met merlin."

* * *

A/N: I havent updated this in a while but i hope you guys like it. Please review and feel free to ask or tell me anything. new chapter for losing my own game should be up soon.


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